


the wheel of fortune

by heliianth



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Body Dysphoria, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Calamity Ganon, Sheikah is an actual language, Trans Female Character, Trans Link (Legend of Zelda), Trans Male Character, Trans Zelda (Legend of Zelda), based on a tumblr post i made lmao, both Link and Zelda are called Zelda for a good portion of this god help me make this not confusing, role reversal au but with a twist :)!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24587491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliianth/pseuds/heliianth
Summary: The Goddess, with stone lips and monolith wings, casted Her light upon her loved land of Hyrule once more. Twin drops of essence, one, two, and on the first day of spring they blossomed. However, something was awry, and Her delicate tombstone smile drooped. She watched as gentle, golden hands wrapped not around royal silk and gasped not the air of a holy palace, but rather around simple, modest mattress. She turned Her worried gaze to wanderlustful strong hands that already reached for a hilt and cried not a sound, only to find that Her aged mortality incarnate caressed his cheeks with a mother’s knuckles.That day in Hyrule, mischievous winds sent whispers to Her Sisters perched in the deepest heights of the land and to Her lonely Witness, who awakened for the first time in ten thousand years.Oh She was a master of divine humor, She mused to herself, and all the world Her joke.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	the wheel of fortune

**Author's Note:**

> i just need to write little Link and Zelda but also do it differently because i'm insecure ;w; 
> 
> please enjoy! comments fuel me

She moved like water. Water was a volatile thing, though, its nature in the eye of the observer. It could be coarse and rough, a sailor’s doom and a swimmer’s horror, or it could be beautiful waves and calming tides. She was both today. 

To the hall maids she looked graceful with her hands gripping her navy velvet skirts and delicate tiara glittering on rusted hair like sunshine manifest. To the courtyard guards observing the Captain’s drill session she looked hurried, heels clacking up a storm on the pristine halls and that same wonderful hair a mussed mess. 

When she stepped out into the rain the cadets training gave pause, eyes under crash-course helmets widening and swords faltering. They quickly dropped to their knees at the mere presence of her. It wasn’t everyday that a Queen visited them during training.

She let go of her dress, placing her hands around her mouth. The Captain running drills in the downpour lowered his weapon, opening his jaw to ask a question, but she cried out “Zelda!” before a word could leave his lips.

“Your majesty?” the Captain questioned, knees wavering in the want to bow but the simultaneous uncertainty to whether it would be appropriate.

“Zelda!” she just called again, eyes expectant in the dark storm. She didn’t acknowledge the stares, steady in the eyes of such an audience. She looked regal and brave, even if her skin was paler than the year before and her hair was plastered to her forehead. “I know you’re here, Kotori said you left your room at sunrise!” 

There was a movement, branches on the decorative blossom tree rustled and out tumbled one small Princess Zelda, who looked positively soaked through even with an overlarge cloak smothering her small frame. “Fuck!” she cursed, sending the least intimidating glare possible towards her mother while she stuck a thumb in her mouth to nurse some sort of wound. 

_ “Zel-da!” _ the Queen rushed over, mud staining the trim of her once impeccable dress. Whether the exclamation came from seeing the Princess in such a state or hearing her language, she didn’t know. She shucked the hood of the cloak over Zelda’s head and let out a tired breath as the child held out her hand for her mother to examine the wound. “Something bit you!” 

“Your majesty,” the Captain started explaining quietly, but nervously. “We had no idea the Princess was here.” Who knew what could come of him if someone accused him of hiding the Princess?

Zelda pushed off the hood with a noise of protest, wiggling bare feet in squishy grass. She was still wearing her bedrobe, white linen sullied by dirt and cherry petals, but at least it was not the only thing in disarray. All sorts of twigs and leaves stuck out of dark golden hair, too, and scrapes littered her palms. “You scared off my lizard,” she said to both her mother and the large man in the silly feathered helmet, like it was an obvious statement. “And he didn’t  _ bite  _ me, he was saying hi. We were watching the kuh-nights play swords together. It’s funny.” 

“Don’t be rude. We can watch them train later,” the Queen admonished gently. “When it isn’t raining.” 

“But the lizard won’t be there! Everything is ruined,” Zelda pulled out of her grasp, and the man could see that she had tied the cloak around her waist and made it into some sort of overshirt. Small feet darted through grass and would have gone scrambling up the tree if the Queen hadn’t caught her hand. 

“You’ll get sick,” she said patiently, a small smile painting her face with the deftest artist’s hands. Her lips were thin but kind, even as her difficult daughter pouted up at her with bottomless blue eyes.  _ “Skōbōkyeka,  _ you can’t find the lizard again if you’re too bedridden to adventure.” 

Zelda, for once in her short life, paused. “Okay!” she decided after nary a second, and surged forwards with her mother’s hand in her own. “We’ll go find Impie then, and she can watch with us out of the rain.” 

The Queen shook her head exasperatedly with a smile. “Sorry, boys,” she said loudly as she was tugged away from the courtyard. “Resume your practice!” And she was gone. 

The cadets rose, questioning eyes turned towards their instructor. There wasn’t a sound, only the pitter patter of fat droplets against brick and grass. “You heard her,” he barked, grateful for the way the water hid his embarrassment-tinged face. “Resume!” 

In the walls of the castle, the Queen scooped up her rambunctious daughter, much to the six year old’s chagrin. She immediately demanded to be put down, which was met with a hum and a tap to a freckled nose.

To any passersby, the small Princess looked like a miniature of her mother, with hair like antique gold and long already-pierced ears. She had the Queen’s petite frame, soft nose, and owlish eyes, but her hands and mouth were very much her father’s. Her hands weren’t big, per se, just not meant for something like official documents or a quill, and her mouth would have been washed out with soap sooner had Miya believed in that type of punishment. 

The most peculiar thing, though, was the precise color of those aforementioned owl eyes. Queen Zelda Miyasakah Hyrule the millionth-and-something, or simply Miya, was known for her eyes; sweet like cherry and stern like ruby. A Sheikah’s gaze was a genetically dominant trait, anyone with even a trace of lineage sported them, so it was a wonder when her daughter blinked open to reveal cobalt as if it were nothing. 

The maids still whispered about it in the halls, even so many years later. How the Queen must’ve been sterile, how she’d had another woman birth her daughter for her and subsequently doomed the legacy of the Goddess. Even as a babe, the Queen’s eyes were a point of hot controversy, and it seemed rumors like that never died out in the halls of gossip-proud servants with nothing else to talk about during work hours. But no one dared speak it now as she ventured through the same walkways as them. The King would have their heads. 

“We can’t see Impa today,” Miya told Zelda, who had given up on squirming out of her mother’s strong grip. Zelda huffed, small fists weakly punching the soggy fabric of her mother’s dress. 

“Chiefy Urbosa?” she asked, suddenly perking up when a maid caught her eye. She waved happily at the woman, even as the woman cautiously averted her gaze elsewhere. Rude.

“Not Urbosa either. Remember what your father said? You cannot visit anyone until you’ve accomplished your weekly reading. Procrastination is not befitting of a Princess.” The royal wing of the castle could not be further from the guards’ courtyard, the Queen bemoaned internally. How her tiny daughter travelled halfway across the castle without being caught by Athnim, her appointed escort turned babysitter, she would never know. 

The child groaned and buried her face on Miya’s shoulder, bringing a fist down again. Her mother simply caught it with a trained hand and gently put it away, soothing down muddy hair and twirling it around a finger off of Zelda’s back. “I don’t wanna be a Princess anymore!” she cried, though not loudly. No matter how much she chattered away, it seemed Zelda could never bring herself to be loud. “I wanna play swords with Impie and Urbosa. Books are  _ boring.”  _ She drew out that last word with emphasis and a whine. 

Miya smiled and rolled her eyes as she rounded a corner again. She waved a hand at a couple guards who sent her concerned glances. “Yes, Zellie, but if you’d only get this one assignment finished then you could play swords and eat all the cake you want afterwards.” 

“Mr. Polyo hates me,” she just grumbled. “And fun. Daddy hates that too.” That drew a chortle from the Queen.

“Maybe he just hates how you track mud everywhere you go,” she substituted with her own logic. “Which is why I’m not putting you down, by the way. Your feet are filthy and those wonderful maids work enough as it is.” 

Zelda let out an offended gasp that echoed through the hall, but drew not a single eye. Everyone in the castle eventually heard about Miya and her husband’s constant struggle to get the Princess to wear shoes. It wasn’t news anymore. The little girl stubbornly resisted every attempt, for the simple reason of, “Shoes are itchy!” 

“And those Sheikah tights you so love are not?” Miya questioned her daughter.

“Those help me sneak. Shoes are loud and awful.” 

The Queen could not have agreed more, despite her amused tone. Heels were positively atrocious, and while she moved like water her heels were wrought with blisters. It didn’t help her gradually wilting joints and fragile skin, which now tore as easily as paper. No one but Rhoam and her handmaiden Kotori had noticed her sickly condition quite yet, not even Zelda. Cosmetics covered up even the greenest of complexions. 

“Is that how you’ve been escaping poor Athnim? _ ”  _

“Nooo,” Zelda hummed, caught red-handed. Her daughter was plenty observant, though, those sapphire owl eyes ever vigilant for even the slightest movement. If she could see a lizard in a rainstorm, she could certainly see the knowing look in her mother’s red eyes. “You can’t tell anyone!” she whispered frantically, pressing her nose right to Miya’s. 

She just laughed. “Your secrets are always safe with me,  _ skōbōkyeka.  _ Anything under the sun, remember?” 

A grin erupted on Zelda’s face, pushing freckles side to make way for white teeth, two of which were missing from the very front. “Anything under the sun.”

It was a promise, a promise that the little Princess could tell the Queen anything, no matter how taboo or embarrassing. Miya’s greatest accomplishment, for all her propriety and early campaigning for restoration of historical automation and acceptance of Sheikah in public positions, was the fact that her daughter trusted her. 

She loved her Zellie with every part of her heart, her  _ skōbōkyeka,  _ her little wanderer. She loved her even when she could not see her for eight hours a day. Every minute spent outside of that suffocating, incense and prayer laden room was a minute cherished, and Miya would rather be nothing at all than be absent in the eyes of her daughter. 

“I love you,” she whispered to her, voice soft and precious. 

Zelda didn’t reciprocate it with words, too fascinated toying with strands of blonde hair that were not her own to speak, but the muffled noise that sprouted up was all the affirmation the Queen needed.

They spent the next two hours finding critters and naming birds ridiculous things in their private garden. Zelda played cook with leaves and mud and braided flowers into her hair until her fingers went numb instead of reading about the history of the Calamity like Rhoam and Tutor Polyo wanted her to. The bath she’d dunked the girl into was all for naught, because rolling around in the dirt, scaling sheer surfaces that should not have been climbable, and swinging a sword with skill that no six year old should possess was her favorite pastime. 

Zelda was too young to know tragedies like the Calamity, Miya had said when her husband asked why their daughter was filthy and exhausted. She presented Rhoam with a lizard afterwards. “Her name is Saria,” she recalled telling him cheekily. “Your daughter named her. She hasn’t even reached the tale of the Seven Sages yet and she knows the name, maybe you should lay off her.” 

Rhoam simply told her that tragedy learned early would never strike later, unphased by Saria’s unblinking yellow eyes and scaly body as she crawled down the side of the wall where the Queen had released her from out the window. Miya accepted the reasoning compliantly, hope still burning as brightly in her veins as the Goddess’ golden nectar. Her nightmares of malice and darkness mattered not.

Yes, Zelda would be just fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> is Miya based on my own mom? perhaps *insert eyes emoji*
> 
> chapters should be a lot longer from here on out. i've got a limited amount of tarot cards to name chapters off of and i gotta make em count


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